


Scrambling

by gabsrambles



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Angst Train, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-04
Updated: 2018-07-04
Packaged: 2019-06-05 07:19:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15165482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gabsrambles/pseuds/gabsrambles
Summary: Lena finds out Kara is Supergirl and Kara simply has to deal.





	Scrambling

**Author's Note:**

> For the angst lovers :)

It’s been thirty nine days.

It’s not even that long, really. It’s a blink in Kara’s life span, in the grand scheme of things. It’s not twenty four years in the phantom zone.

But it feels it. It feels worse, because time is truly passing for her, itching into the layers of her skin, the awareness of all she’s lost right there for her to see. It feels like something vital is gone. She spent so long clinging to her friendship with Lena, holding it as close as she could that now it’s gone, it feels even worse than it could. 

Kara has always been a glutton for punishment, self imposed, of course. 

There’d been no big declaration. No heartfelt conversation. Nothing planned. Nothing like it should have been. She’d spent so long hiding it all from Lena, trying to cover it up, knowing she’d lose her if Lena found out, that she never even gave much thought to how she should rectify it all, come clean, fix it before it broke beyond repair.

It had already passed that point. Perhaps she knew that. She did know it. So she would never tell her, even as it left a film of something utterly  _wrong_  in her mouth.

So there was no big declaration. No heartfelt conversation. No plan. Nothing like there should have been. Just a quiet walk at night, through a park. A heady feeling, the taste of the wine they shared at dinner on her tongue, flushing Lena’s cheeks a pink so soft it left an ache in Kara she’d spent so long ignoring but now pushed at her awareness. The gentle brush of Lena’s elbow against her own. The sound of Lena’s heart, thumping in her chest, beating a rhythm against her ribs. A sound as comforting as Alex’s. Kara didn’t even know what she’d started to track it. There was the lilt of Lena’s laughter, so rarely offered, her smile pushing up those flushed, flushed cheeks. Then there was the click Kara knew too well. The sound of the gun firing. And Kara’s hand shot up on reflex, as it always did, but as it always would, without hesitation, for Lena.

As it had before.

She caught the bullet right in front of Lena’s face, inches away, aimed true, right between her eyes and there was nausea in Kara’s stomach at the thought of how that was just too close.

That smile faded. Lena’s lips parted, a gasp of air, shock. She blinked, eyes focussed on the bullet, on Kara’s fingers wrapped around it. Her head turned, minimally, and she swallowed as she stared at Kara, and Kara stared right back.

It was one of those moments of realisation that everything, from that moment forward, was going to change. The feeling of a thread tugging to pieces, stripped bare. Of a path that’s crumbling beneath you and it doesn’t matter how much your fingers scrabble in the rich dark earth, doesn’t matter how much it sinks under your nails as you cling harder–that’s it, you’re falling.

“Lena.” Kara mostly breathed her name, more than said it. It felt raw in her mouth, scraping away something as she said it.

Because as Kara was having her own realisation, so was Lena. 

And Kara couldn’t even stay and fix it, smooth that over–try to scrabble her fingers in the dirt, dig them in, cling even as she knew it was pointless.

Because there was another click.

Someone was trying to kill Lena, and all Lena could do was look at Kara like  _she’d_  broken her.

Because she had.

Kara turned and raced to where the sound was from, zeroed in on the racing heartbeat of a man, it turned out later, was a hired killer. She had to take him to the DEO–he knew her identity. He’d seen it all.

And Lena was gone.

Kara’s fist would have ached from all the knocking on Lena’s door.  Her voice would have been hoarse, if it did that kind of thing, from all the voicemails. She sent texts. She tried emails.

Lena wouldn’t see her.

And thirty nine days later, that didn’t change.

And something was missing.

An empty space near Kara’s ribs, something aching and lost and gone. Worse than what Mon-el had left behind when he first left. And it wasn’t until she woke up, sheets twisted around her legs and the dream still clinging that instead of a clicking gun and the look of betrayal on Lena’s face, Kara had kissed her under that deep dark sky with the smell of summer cut grass around them, and Lena had wrapped her hands in Kara’s shirt and simply tugged her closer.

Not only was that friendship gone, but any possibility of the thing Kara hadn’t even known she wanted.

Alex saw Lena for coffee. For lunches. They’d inched closer after Sam moved with Ruby and after trying so hard to save Sam together. And Kara just gave Alex tight smiles and said she was happy Lena had someone. Which was true–she just didn’t mention the sharp digs of jealousy that it wasn’t her anymore, that Lena lit up around.

Because she would around Alex. Of course she would. Alex is Alex.

And when Kara goes to Alex’s laden with bags of food unannounced, and hears those two heartbeats through the door something sinks in her, because she won’t force her presence on Lena. She won’t do that. Not on someone that’s had family she doesn’t want force their presence in some way or another continuously. So she turns to go, to leave, then pauses. It’s been thirty nine days, and Kara is just hungry for the sight of her. So she slips her glasses down and looks through the wall and she almost drops the bag at the sight of Lena sitting on Alex’s counter, Alex between her legs and kissing her slowly, Lena’s hands in her hair, fingertips brushing over that newly shaved patch behind Alex’s ear like she knows it already–like she’s done it before. Like she likes it.

A few weeks later, Alex tells her on the couch and Kara smiles and acts like she’s happy for her and Alex sees that sadness anyway. She leans into Kara and says she thinks Lena will come round, that they’ll be friends again.

She only partially understands the falseness in Kara’s voice.

And Kara nods and says she’ll wait, give Lena the time she needs, but she does so hope so. 

And she pretends that that will be enough and this love that sits like a stone in her heart is nothing. It’s nothing and not important and one day, they’ll all be friends again and Kara won’t ache at the sight of the smile Lena will give Alex.

It’s nothing.

It was Kara, after all, that tore down that possibility built between them, with fingers that feel caked in dirt at all the attempts to hold her life together.


End file.
